“What has film been?”
It
was once easy to say that film has simply been a source of entertainment for
the masses, an art form. However, after watching The Prestige this answer seems utterly insufficient. The Prestige attempted to serve as a
metaphoric explanation of movies and cinema in general—what they truly are. It
sought to justify why certain information is always withheld, why illusion is
so important, why it would harm us to know all of the “cinematic tricks,” etc.
Thus in a sense, the film was trying to explain the history of film and what
film has always been—a trick, an illusion, a spectacle of secrets. I can no longer think of the question "what has film been" in simple terms.
If
we are to look at the history of film, we are following Historicism. This approach
yields to many questions such as (but not limited to): “How does history create
film?” “How does film create history?” “What stories do certain groups of
people want or need or fear?” and “In what style must these stories be told?”
I
believe that The Prestige walks hand
in hand with history—using history to create it’s world but also serving as a
part of history. This movie was released in 2006 but the film’s action took
place at the end of the 19th century. Elements from the
past—dialect, clothing, technology, etc—were taken and used to create “life”
within the movie. Furthermore, the character of Tesla was a real historical
figure! The entire film depended on the past to create its future as a successful film. It's interesting to note that most of the best films are those based on things that have happened in the past. Perhaps history is something that resonates with all generations. It literately is "timeless." In addition, as I mentioned before, The Prestige subtly tried to explain the
history of entertainment—the reason that people used to attend the theater to
see plays and magicians is the same reason that they watch movies today.
Another
thing to note: In The Prestige,
people were portrayed very interestingly. There were certain “stereotypes” of
what type of people we should trust vs. those that we should fear. Much of this was appearance based. This of
course pertains in particular to magicians. After seeing this film, it would be
hard not to think of magicians as disturbed, murdering psychopaths if it were not for the
barrier created between the film’s world and our own. That brings us to the
style in which the story is told. In order for us to walk away from a film with
the understanding that it was simply a movie and not reality, we need to be reminded
that everything was an illusion. In The Prestige, this was done so in two ways—through the
dialogue and the structure. The dialogue mentioning how audience members “want to be fooled" enabled us to be reminded that we were in fact also being fooled as we watched the movie itself.
This was done so though, in such a subtle way, that it did not ruin the magic of
the film. In regard to the structure, there were drastic time jumps that
revealed information slowly, but not in chronological order. This at times led
to confusion, again creating certain barriers and preventing us from
having a full understanding of the story until the very end.
First off, I would like to say that I would be very surprised if you did not manage an A on this next paper.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I never thought of the movie this way, and you bring up an interesting point. I agree that this movie does what all movies (and all magic tricks) do: it tricks us, in some way or another, at least in believing the reality of that film. What I find most interesting is that this movie literally tricked us, which is both funny and ironic. I also think the whole premise behing all magic tricks can be put to use in the analysis of movies. In (almost) every movie, we start out with something, that something is changed, and we expect something in return at the end.
I also agree that people watch movies to be tricked. If, during the entire course of the movie, we think about the fact that there is a camera, the director and crew on the set, the editing, and the fact that the characters are actors who are acting, we ruin the entire movie. Though we know in the back of our minds that it's just a movie, we do slide this out of our heads so that we can just enjoy the movie.
However, I don't know if I can agree with what you said about The Prestige being designed to show what film has been, that's a thing that only the director can address. Perhaps he was thinking about how all films are tricks, and wanted to prove this point...or perhaps not. It's hard to say from which side of the fourth wall he was thinking at this point. But it is possible that he wanted to expemplify the point you made about the trickery of movies and chose a well-suited story to make a movie out of to this end.